Wild Pollan

There's a great interview with Michael Pollan at Yale Environment 360. He runs through his usual take on local food, the evils of corn, and gives a plug for grassfed beef, which is always a way to charm me.

My favorite passage is this

My experience was entering the garden with a head full of Thoreau and Emerson, and finding those ideas, as beautiful as they are, do not prepare you for when the woodchuck comes and mows down your little crop of seedlings. That approach to nature counsels passive spectatorship, and argues implicitly that the woodchuck has as much right to your broccoli as you do, because it’s wild. So I, perforce, had to learn how to think about nature in a way that was a little different.

We’ve had in this country what I call a wilderness ethic that’s been very good at telling us what to preserve. You know, eight percent of the American landmass we’ve kind of locked up and thrown away the key. That’s a wonderful achievement and has given us things like the wilderness park.

This is one of our great contributions to world culture, this idea of wilderness. On the other hand, it’s had nothing to say of any value for the ninety-two percent of the landscape that we cannot help but change because this is where we live. This is where we grow our food, this is where we work. Essentially the tendency of the wilderness ethic is to write that all off. Land is either virgin or raped. It’s an all or nothing ethic. It’s either in the realm of pristine, preserved wilderness, or it’s development — parking lot, lawn.

Making any sort of living off of the land requires hard decisions...shoot the skunk family living under the porch, or let them be and live with the funk forever. Spray the Canada thistle, or let it take over the most productive ground. Till, or no till. When we're talking about working landscapes, there isn't a whole lot of unmanaged wilderness in them, but there's even less black and white choices.

What we can do is work to promote ecological diversity in our landscapes...this creates a resilience that allows our farms to weather whatever tough decision we need to make.

Future of Farming

Deston attended one of the Washington State Future of Farming session last week...he has a good take on what's wrong with the process, agricultural economics, and its perception by legislators....check it out. I look forward to reading his followups.

The chopping block

Shannon Hayes is an author of several books and the host of grassfedcooking.com. Her recent blurb to subscribers lays out the drama of the current grain situation, which I've gone into at some length here...

Your Turkey Is On The Chopping Block

June 2008

Last Thursday was meat cutting day at the farm. Usually, processing days are pleasurable. Cutting and wrapping requires that we have extra hands on duty, and the long hours spent breaking down a couple beef carcasses inevitably results in a steady flow of bawdy humor and happy camaraderie. But on this particular morning, as I pull into the farmyard, the mood is black. Clint, who runs the saw in the cutting room, hurries by. "Look out", he mutters, as I shuttle my daughters toward the house to see Grammie, "It's bad in there."

I find Grammie (a.k.a. my mom) in her office, staring at the farm spreadsheets, one hand on her forehead as she clicks through the numbers.

"What's wrong?"

"The price of broiler mash went up $20"

"What else is new?" My tone was sarcastic.

"In one week."; It went up $20 per ton in just one week. The feed mill says there's no end in sight.

Price hikes are a grim reality for everyone. The cost of transporting our meats to farmers markets has doubled since 2005. So have the costs for heating the brooders and hauling the livestock. The week prior, the price of casings for our handmade sausages tripled. And in only one year's time, the price of grain has doubled.

We've grown used to it. We are a diversified, pasture-based livestock farm, which means we are in a far better position than most folks when it comes to surviving rising fuel costs and a global food crisis. Grazing ruminants -- cows, sheep and goats, can convert forage into good food. And they can make use of our hilly, rocky, frost-prone hillsides that simply can't grow crops. Poultry and pigs are not ruminants. They are omnivores, and require grain to supplement their diet if we are to produce enough to sell. Because we keep them out on pasture, our grain requirements are minimal compared to producers managing concentrated feeding operations. Still, feed costs make up a good portion of the farm budget. The survival of our family business is like plate spinning, where we focus simultaneously on several elements of the family farm equation: greater diversification, stepped-up marketing, cost cutting, and increased self-reliance.

In truth, we find plate spinning rather enjoyable. Today's small farmer must be into such a game, willing to assume some risks and to be creative with business management. Generally, we are stimulated by the challenges, forever ready to sit down with calculators, pens and pads to hash out whatever confronts us. If this didn't hold appeal, we'd all have 9-5 jobs. So I am surprised at the gravity in my mother's voice.

"Mom, Stop seeing the glass half-empty. We'll figure out something."

"Damn it, the glass is half-empty, Shannon!" And her eyes fill with tears. "It's the turkeys. I can't control the costs on the turkeys! What are people going to do for Thanksgiving?"

But, I think to myself, the glass is still half-full. The hard times we all face are marked by a generosity of spirit within our community. Daily, I am inspired by the little things folks are willing to do with the understanding that we all need to pull together: The feed mill faces fuel surcharges on all its products. It passes none of them along to the farmers, figuring the increased grain prices are too great a burden already. Many of our expenses have doubled, yet our grassfed meat prices remain steady. Our poultry and pork prices have only gone up 11% in two year's time. Neighbors call before driving to town to see if anyone on the road needs something. Interns offer to take reductions in pay.

My mother, however, isn't wrong. The glass is half empty, because the generosity stops with the common man. Like the big oil companies, agribusiness is getting fatter and fatter while the common folks’ bank accounts grow lean.

Last year, neglecting to mandate conservation measures, Congress mandated a five-fold increase in the use of biofuels. According to a story in The New York Times, one fifth of our national corn crop is now used for ethanol production. Increasingly, farmers are planting more and more corn, which cuts the acreage available for other crops, like soybeans, thus driving up those prices as well (1). Next, take a disaster, like the flooding in Iowa, and add it to the mix. I called our local feed mill to find out why our broiler mash prices went up $20 a ton.

"It’s the floods in Iowa," explained our account manager.
"But those crops weren't even close to harvest! The prices you are quoting me are for crops that were already harvested. Those expenses have come and gone"
"Well, you know what they say: investors can kill a crop three times and still make money on it" The feed mill has no control over the grain prices. They have to pay the going rate as determined by the Chicago Board of Trade, whether the feed they buy is local, or brought in from the Midwest. Thus, the price of grain isn't actually determined by the farmers who grow it. It’s determined by the investors. The results? Staggering profits for a few multinational agribusiness corporations. According to a May report on Marketplace Radio, in their last quarter, Bunge (a major soybean processor) increased their net earnings by 1,964%; Cargill netted over one billion dollars (an 86% jump over one year ago), ADM’s profits were up 42%, and Monsanto’net income more than doubled (2). It bears repeating - All these profits are from one quarter only.

The real cost of foods, in which fair wages are paid and environmental stewardship is assured, is a price we willingly pay. But when food costs are inflated by greedy speculation on uncertainty, it is the masses who either pay the price, or go hungry.

Back at the farm, Mom shuffles through her turkey orders. Everyone who placed their order by May first was quoted a set price on their Thanksgiving bird. We made the same deal with customers who pre-ordered their chickens. Ordinarily, our return to labor for the annual chicken production is $10,000. As of last week, it was down to $4,000. We have already begun wildly cutting back the number of chickens we will produce for the season in efforts to prevent further financial loss. We consider whether the same must now be done for the turkeys, which ordinarily would be arriving on the farm in the next few weeks. At this point, we will have to drop our turkey production by half and ask our customers to pay a higher price to stem our losses.

This is a seemingly simple business decision, easily made in hard times. But there sits my mother at her desk, tears falling on her calculator as she runs the numbers. My daughters, ages four and one, scrambled up to her lap. My eldest daughter earnestly brushes her Grammie's hair out of her eyes. And then I understand.
Sap Bush Hollow Farm has been in business since my family moved to West Fulton in 1979. To keep it afloat, my mother has learned to be a shrewd businesswoman. But she is also a grandmother. And Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday, where we celebrate abundance, family, community, generosity, and love. Those turkeys have come to symbolize all of that. My mom is not fretting over the dollars we will inevitably lose. She is thinking about the families who will not have enough food this year, and the corporations, not held accountable, who will reap a great harvest.

1. Martin, Andrew, “Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing,” The New York Tomes, April 15, 2008.
2. Gardner, Sarah, “Corporate Giants Get Fat on Food Crisis,” Marketplace, May 8th, 2008.

Shannon Hayes is the host of grassfedcooking.com and the author of The Farmer and the Grill  and The Grassfed Gourmet. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.

Farmer's friends

Craigslist is the frugal farmer's best friend...and a truck that can haul long items doesn't hurt

On the way home from Laurel, I didn't scrape that 16' gate hanging down low once....It was close, though

Starting out

Starting out farming is getting to be a pretty popular pastime...between the cost of food, the rise of locavory, and the price of oil, there's currently more demand for good, locally produced food than the market is able to supply. Folks on the PACSAC list even joke that they'd like to be on the list of full CSA's, not looking for new customers. (The site expired...folks are working on it....)
While we are far from expert, we've been at this on our own for almost 10 years, and our current, owned site for nearly 6. So here's a rundown of some of the issues we've seen and encountered in the quest to keep a small farm viable.

Access to Land
This is the issue that stymies most folks...everyone wants a big chunk of class 1 soil, 20 minutes from the city. Simple economics means that those pieces get snapped up by the horse people and taken out of production. While the current surge in commodity and hay prices may put an end to that, it doesn't help new farmers in the short term.

We rented our first farm for about 3 years...it was the best thing we could have done. I'll go into mistakes below further, but really, there's nothing more valuable than being able to ride a steep learning curve on someone else's land. It also makes you creative, since you don't want to sink a lot of money into capital expenditures in a temporary situation.

While finding land to rent can be a challenge, it is out there....craiglist has posts about it, but just being in the community and asking around at the SWCD office, extension office, feed store bulletin boards, and basically telling everyone that you meet that you're looking for a piece of ground to rent should get you some options.

Buying is a bigger leap, but it's pretty rewarding. The secret is to do lots and lots of due dilligence...this is your productive future your working with here. Kurt has a great rundown on purchasing properties...read that for soil types and water issues. Our soil is Class 3 Hazelair Silt Loam...not great for growing crops, but we knew that grazing was what we wanted to do, and we grow great grass here! Water is a bigger issue...see mistakes, below, but our farm's low water output is a limiting factor in what we can grow.

While a realtor or farm locating service might help you out, there's not a lot of money in it for them to find an affordable, productive piece of land to farm; they make their money in overpriced horse properties. Scouring listings (which we did for over a year) and talking to people (see above) will be far more productive.

I know I bugged our realtor with my repeated requests to visit the land...walking the ground, looking at the drainage, digging holes, checking the vegetation that grew there already. Looking back with what I know now, I'd have bugged her more...surprises are no fun, especially if they involve big weedy junk piles, past oil spills, or noxious weeds. We were fortunate in that we had a minimum of these problems.

Financial Viability

Everyone interested in farming has read (or should read) Salatin and Coleman, with their vision of diverse, productive farmscapes. When we started, we had visions of orchards, gardens, livestock, a certified kitchen for value added products, an edible plant nursery, and a chicken processing facility. The reality is a little different, however...both of those authors are full of good advice, but should be taken with a grain of salt. Not only are they growing in a different climate and landscape than most people, they oversimplify some issues when they become inconvenient. It does sell more books, though.

While diversity is obviously necessary to weather the vagaries of drought, late frosts, and predators, the flip side to that is if you have a lot of enterprises, you risk not doing any of them well. When we had cattle, sheep, pigs, laying hens, and broilers, there were some excellent synergies between them. The steers ate the coarse grass, preparing it for the sheep to eat the low grass, weeds, and clovers. The layers ate the fly and worm larva. The pigs took care of our large supply of cull eggs. The downside was each of the species didn't do as well as they could have (resulting in lower slaughter weights, and thus less money) since we were spread pretty thin...each species has its preferences, and if we got too busy and put off rotating the pastures, even just a day, gains suffered. This applies to weedy carrot beds and rootbound nursery stock as well...it happens to everyone, but it takes extra labor to fix, which cuts into your bottom line.

And as unfortunate as it is, the bottom line is really important. One of Salatin's great points is that it's hard to make a farm pay a mortgage. Until the land is paid off, you'll be bleeding cash every month, regardless of whether you're making any money that month. Not that its not doable, but its a big financial consideration.

Of the farmers I personally know, most are with a partner, and one of the two has some sort of off farm income, or they have some sort of arrangement where the land is owned by family. Katie and Casey are the one exception I know of...they have a full rundown of their financial starting point, which should be required reading for folks starting out. They also are just about the hardest working people I know, which is saying something...I'd be loathe to recommend anyone else dive into their situation without knowing what they're getting into.

Also, think about health care. We went without for quite a while, and its kindof the way of things with health costs as they are, but if you can't afford health care, can you afford to get hurt farming? Once we had Dalton, the equation changed quite a bit...risking our own health is one thing, but risking his just wasn't going to fly.

Where your sales will be is another consideration...is it CSA, farmer's markets, restauraunts? Probably all 3, to some degree. But they each have their strengths and weaknesses, and each counts as a separate enterprise that has costs associated with it. Read above about spreading yourself too thin (from rich's dictionary - mental overhead: n. the psychic cost associated with fretting about something that you don't have time to deal with right now)

Mistakes

I think the worst kind of mistake is one that someone else has already made. Ask questions of those who've already made them. When we first started out with broilers, The Matron (long before her blog) was a huge help with feed sources and tips. I'm always quizzing ranchers that I work with about the ins and outs of cattle husbandry. While occasionally someone may feel that you're intruding on their turf, for the most part, farm folk are pretty opinionated, and welcome the opportunity to share. Or it could just be that rural living makes them want to talk more....

That said, you will make mistakes. Lots of them. Expensive ones, if you're doing it right. Planting timing, weather, irrigation timing, market demand, driving the tractor into the barn siding. Lots of them. Deal with it, and move on.

Our major mistakes were financial (underestimating how much the mortgage + farm development would cost), hydrological (overestimating the effect of deep ripping our channels would have on surface water), and climatalogical (I didn't realize how prone we were to late frosts here...very bad for tree fruit). Not too bad...since I have a 3/4 time job that I like that pays our mortgage and healthcare, there's still time to work on the farm, and the enterprises that we've abandoned have helped the health and productivity of the land. The ripping does seem to have helped the groundwater in our well capacity. And we've learned a lot, and continue to enjoy producing food for ourselves and customers, so I guess that makes it kindof a success.

Corn fed americans

from the New York Times